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10 things you didn't know about hurricanes

Early retirement

When a tropical cyclone is so deadly or costly that the future use of its name on another storm would be inappropriate for reasons of sensitivity, its name is retired. The country affected can request that a name be removed from the hurricane list by agreement of the World Meteorological Organization.

When a name is retired, it’s stricken from the list and replaced with a like gender name. However, retiring a name actually means that it simply cannot be used for at least 10 years to facilitate historic references, legal actions and insurance claims and to avoid public confusion with another storm of the same name.

The year the most hurricane names were retired was 2005 when five names were removed from the list: Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Stan and Wilma.

Early retirement

When a tropical cyclone is so deadly or costly that the future use of its name on another storm would be inappropriate for reasons of sensitivity, its name is retired. The country affected can request that a name be removed from the hurricane list by agreement of the World Meteorological Organization.

When a name is retired, it’s stricken from the list and replaced with a like gender name. However, retiring a name actually means that it simply cannot be used for at least 10 years to facilitate historic references, legal actions and insurance claims and to avoid public confusion with another storm of the same name.

The year the most hurricane names were retired was 2005 when five names were removed from the list: Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Stan and Wilma.